Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game by Oculus. Oculus Rift virtual reality headset gets Kickstarter cash. 1 August 2012Last updated at 14:51 ET A concept design for the virtual reality headset has proved popular on crowdfunding site Kickstarter A virtual reality headset supported by major video game developers is the latest tech project to cause excitement on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter.
Oculus Rift secured its target of $250,000 (£160,200) within its first four hours of going live. The kit promises gamers an "immersive experience" using a 640 by 800 pixel screen for each of the user's eyes. One VR expert noted that previous efforts to build a consumer-targeted device had disappointed. But Palmer Luckey, the founder of California-based Oculus, said he believed his team had overcome the problems that had caused others to struggle. Continue reading the main story Kickstarted cash Oculus Rift is the latest in a series of tech firms to secure funds via Kickstarter.
Payments are only triggered if a scheme hits its target within a set time limit. Big beasts Tracking glitches. Oculus Rift's Virtual Reality Headset Shows Potential For The Future Of Gaming. Things are about to get real.
The Oculus Rift, a "virtual reality headset" currently catching fire on Kickstarter, has its creators claiming it may just change the future of videogames. Recent years have seen gaming's big names like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo create new controllers and schemes that allow users to play games using their bodies. The Rift, created by Palmer Luckey and a team of game industry veterans, hopes to achieve an even more immersive gaming experience, one that goes beyond body-controlled gaming and 3D to have users feel they are truly inside a game's environment.
The Rift features a 1,280 x 800 high resolution display and low latency head tracking, which means the visuals a wearer sees within the headset will keep up with his or her head movements. Compared to other VR headsets, the Rift also offers the wearer more extensive visuals, with a wider field of view at 110 degrees, trumping Sony's pricey HMZ-T1 headset, which advertises a 45 degree field of view. Under new management, Oculus intends to commercialize the virtual reality headset. Three months ago, the Oculus Rift was the pet project of a virtual reality enthusiast, literally held together with duct tape and hot glue.
Yet as of today, it's raised over $1.6 million on Kickstarter due to thousands of similar virtual reality enthusiasts who want one too. Next year, though, you may not have to be a hobbyist or fund a grassroots project to experience what gaming luminaries like John Carmack are calling "the best VR demo probably the world has ever seen. " That's because founder Palmer Luckey just handed over the reins to executives which plan to turn Oculus into a real, profitable company that sells VR headsets commercially. We caught up with Oculus' newly-minted CEO Brendan Iribe today, to ask him why and how he plans to turn a Kickstarter project into a thriving company.
In 2004, Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov co-founded Scaleform, a company that developed a wildly popular middleware for building scalable video game user interfaces.